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Though I’ve had the notion for a while, I’ve never really voiced it. I’m of the mind that traditional education does not help early child mental development, rather, it hinders it. Increasingly we have been noticing and hearing that our generation and those growing up have been less educated and show less mental aptitude than the ones that came before. This is often attributed to watching TV or playing video games as opposed to reading or socializing as our parents did.

Although these may be contributing factors, I think that the biggest impediment to children’s mental development is the early age that children are placed in institutionalized education. The current educational system in most countries is structured around children achieving a number of established norms before being ‘allowed’ to progress to the next level of difficulty. This type of education based on merit has been in use for hundreds of years. The difference? Structural impediments.

Whereas a child being educated in the local church in a small village two hundred years ago may still have had to pass certain requirements before advancing, he could theoretically finish the entirety of his education before his contemporaries if he shows exceptional mental ability and diligence. For example, you could have a 6 year old and a 12 year old both in the same ‘grade’ of education. This system was based entirely on ability. It was a meritocracy.

Today, children who excel are forced to wait while others complete their work. If I am given a test that I finish in the first 10 minutes of a class, I have to wait the remaining 50 minutes for everyone else to finish before I can leave. My contention is that over years of this sort of behaviour, children begin to mentally retard themselves so that they do not continually experience this level of boredom. Because our system does not allow the opportunity for true excellence, the level of education is in decline.

So why do statistics show that the level of education is on the rise? The system of measurement. We are measuring education based on an inherently subjective set of requirements that must be achieved before a child can graduate from either gradeschool, high school, or university. Government regulation only seems to exacerbate this problem. In the United States, the ‘Leave no Child Behind’ act by George Bush is a terribly inefficient way to deal with the problem of education. The purpose is to ensure that every child reaches a minimum level of education. This is an laudable goal. Yet the method of achieving the goal leaves much to be desired. Rather than singling out the children who cannot keep up with the average (as should be done), the pace of education for the class is adapted to the learning speed of the slowest child.

Inherent genetic differences in education will ultimately affect the theoretical mental capacity of all individuals. It is therefore unlikely that all children in a class will have the same theoretical mental capacity. Rather than helping the slow child in the class, this system actually harms the faster children in the class by not allowing them to reach their potential. Based on this assessment, it would seem that a new system should be devised. This new system would comprise of a meritocratic system whereby children were given a set of requirements that must be fulfilled before advancing to the next grade. A combination of educators, parents, and tutors would help to educate the child on the topics to be understood, and assessments could be taken whenever necessary (online facilitated).

This would allow a child to spend 2 months completing grade 1, where another child may take 8 months. Theoretically, a child could finish high school while one of their contemporaries is still finishing 3rd or 4th grade. I propose that this is the only way to increase the overall mental capacity of our society and to avoid restriction of our children. Given boredom, children will watch TV or play video games. Yet if at a young age, children are excited to learn (and who isn’t excited about the first few days of school?), and are given the unmitigated ability to do so, I propose that children would choose to learn rather than play games or watch TV.

I think we can see empirical evidence of this fact in low-income households containing a highly educated parent. Often if the child does not attend school at an early age and is the integrated into the educational system, the impoverished child is found to have a higher mental ability than her peers. This is because these children rent books from the library rather than watching TV, and learn at an unrestricted pace from their parents, being constantly pushed to more challenging problems.

Unfortunately, both the structural nature of our society as well as our overall perception of exceptional performers, this system will be a long time in coming. The socialization that schools bring to children is a necessary component for functioning in our society, but children can often be cruel. Our society teaches us to be skeptical or hateful toward those who excel, and to ridicule those who do not. In my system, a group of 8 year olds could be picked on by their older classmates, or by their same-aged underclassmen. Similarly, a 12 year old in grade 2 is likely to be picked on for being mentally unable to keep up with his peers.

However, if we were to establish this system in a cloistered society, I think that we would see exceptional results. I think there is a reason why we don’t see many Plato’s, Socrates’, Leonardo Da Vinci’s, Galileo’s, Thomas Jefferson’s, Charles Darwin’s, Thomas Aquinas’ or Descartes anymore. The human race hasn’t devolved, we just haven’t been let to achieve our true potential.

Here is a quote from an article I was reading:

If Snyder’s suspicions are correct, in fact, and savants have not more brainpower than the rest of us, but less, then it’s even possible that everybody starts out life as a savant. Look, for example, at the ease with which children master complex languages — a mysterious skill that seems to shut off automatically around the age of 12. ”What we’re doing is counterintuitive,” Snyder tells me. ”We’re saying that all these genius skills are easy, they’re natural. Our brain does them naturally. Like walking. Do you know how difficult walking is? It’s much more difficult than drawing!”

I’ve been into this type of research for a long while, and it definitely does say something. It leads me to certain ideas about how I will raise my own children, so hopefully I can find a supportive, linguistic, very intelligent wife.